Oct 8, 2012

When the weather gets cool, turn your oven on and warm up the house with the sweet smell of apples and cinnamon. The temperature dropped like 20 degrees since last week, and these homemade buttermilk scones with small bits of apples and a cinnamon spice glaze were the perfect excuse to bake.

Chocolate chip scones are usually my favorite scone variety, but these apple scones may have taken their place! The scones aren't too sweet, so the glaze gives it the perfect balance of sweetness in every bite. If you want to cut back on your sugar, you can make half the glaze, then drizzle it on instead.

Combine the first five ingredients in a medium bowl, stirring with a whisk. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray.

Combine the flours, baking powder, cinnamon nutmeg, and salt in another large bowl, stirring with a whisk. Cut in chilled butter with a pastry blender, or you could use 2 knives, until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Fold in diced minced apples. Add buttermilk mixture, stirring just until moist.

Place dough onto a floured surface and knead lightly four times with floured hands. Form dough into an 9-inch circle onto baking sheet, about 3/4" thick. Using a knife, cut dough into 12 wedges all the way through.

Bake until golden, about 18-20 minutes, depending on your oven. Place on a cooling rack about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, to make the glaze: Mix powdered sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg with 2 tbsp of milk, adding 1/2 tbsp more (1 tsp at a time) if necessary to get the consistency to the right thickness. Stir until completely smooth.

Place scones on parchment or wax paper and drizzle the glaze over the scones using a spoon - or- place the glaze in a shallow bowl and dip the top of the scones into the glaze, then let it sit on the waxed paper to harden.

When I saw this post on Facebook, I had to take a pause in breath. Apples are one of my favorites as well as scones. I have a new item for breakfast. Since it's just me and I know myself (can't eat just one), I have a quick question - can I half the recipe or freeze before or after baking? If not, I may take half of them to work and place something good and calorie friendly in the breakroom, shh, secret.

Hi, tamwash, I just wanted to pipe in that my sister gives teas and she freezes scones all the time, so it does work! She freezes them before baking and then just bakes them at the normal time (I think!) They turn out just a hair "flatter" but still taste just as great...just remember to leave the butter at pea-sized pieces so they're extra tender! The dough will look "wrong" but they will taste so "right". =)

I'll be honest - I was a little skeptical of a low fat scone. I just ate one of these, and they are DELICIOUS!!! I can't believe how moist and flavorful these are! I could eat one of these every morning and be happy! Thanks Gina for another knockout recipe!

Im not a huge fan of apple but love the idea of a skinny fall scone! Could you use the same recipe but swap out the apple sauce for pumpkin puree and add in something like mini chocolate chips or nuts instead of the apple pieces to make a spiced pumpkin chocolate chip scone? Or would that mess up the consistency?

I just have to tell you your site is now my menu planner for the week! We are doing weight watchers and these recipes are delicious and my WHOLE family eats it. So thank you for making my job of feeding my family easier! When will the cookbook be out?

I'm eating these right now and they are absolutely wonderful! My husband has eaten 2 already. The granny smith apples were key because they give a needed sweet-sourness that other apples wouldn't give. Thanks!

Gina- I just made a full batch of your crockpot applesauce (SOOO yummy and carmella enough to be a dessert in its own right!) Anyways, I was wondering if I could use said sweetened applesauce instead of the unsweetened the recipe calls for? If I did that, how much would you suggest I reduce the brown sugar? Thank you SO much for all the hard work you do. I make at least 80% of my dinners from your site and everyone in my family thinks Im an amazing cook thanks to you!Crissy

Wow...this is making it to the brunch table this weekend!! Could I possibly use graham flour (Bob's Red Mill)instead of the whole wheat flour in the recipe...or go half & half?...Thank you for your consistently wonderful sharing!

Not sure if I did something wrong, but my dough was way too sticky and almost impossible to work with. I know I measured everything correctly. I had to keep adding flour to the dough until it was pliable. Hoping they bake up OK!

Oh, I'm glad I wasn't the only one! My dough wasn't so much "dough" as "batter." I'm not exactly sure what went wrong, as I too measured everything correctly. Mine baked up ok... more like scone-shaped muffins than scones as far as texture goes, but the flavor didn't suffer any!

Me too! I was really concerned, and thought maybe I should add more flour but they were already pretty unsweet...which was not helped by the fact that I didn't like the glaze because the powdered sugar gave it a funny taste.

I wanna try to make these again, hopefully they will turn out better next time.

I also found to dough beyond sticky! I could not cut it into wedges before baking. Any suggestions on how much more flour could be added without ruining the texture? Hoping they turn out okay, they sure smell good!

I'm not much of a baker, but these look fantastic and I think I'll make a batch this weekend. Do you think it would be OK to substitute Splenda brown sugar blend for the brown sugar? I have it on hand, and never use regular brown sugar, so I'd hate to buy some just for the 1/4 cup needed here.

Sifting (using an actual sifter or a fine mesh sieve) will remove the lumps from the powdered sugar so you get a nice, smooth glaze. This recipe doesn't call for sifting the flour and other dry ingredients, but I usually do, just so it all comes together easier.

Found this site on the top Blogs on Bloglovin and was super excited to look through it especially as I am a Weight Watcher's member. The recipes look awesome! The problem I am having is that I can't get them to print out on my printer. It goes to the print screen with some annoying advertisements popping up too but it never goes to the printer. After the printer screen goes away the advertisements are still on the screen covering the recipe picture. I'm not sure if they are screwing something up or if the print option doesn't work on this site. I would love to be able to print instead of write (yes, I am lazy) plus I have notebooks I put my recipes in that have plastic sleeves and the print outs work so much better for future use.

Just wanted you to know, now that I have had time to cruise your site, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!!! I have printed probably a dozen recipes so far and I can't wait to try them out. With my car in the shop tomorrow, I am devoting a day to setting up a menu for the week for my family and not tell them it is Weight Watchers approved! The problem with being successful with my diet before was no recipes to follow that would also work for my family, husband and four picky teenagers. So, I would make them their meals and one also for me time consuming and a bore as I usually ended up making something easy for me, chicken breast, and got sick of it and quit. After the week, I will see what they think. Tonight I am starting with Chicken Potpie Soup that looks wonderful. Sorry this is so lengthy but I'm very appreciative of the time you are putting towards this site :)

I immediately set to baking this recipe as soon as I read it over--changed a few things but it turned out great! I ended up cutting it into 8 sections and with the slight changes, they are 199 calories each. Thanks for the inspiration.

Ah Genius Gina, your talent never ceases to amaze me. I lay here in bed, should be sleeping and instead am starving. And now these scones are calling me name. Sigh. I am sure I will dream of food tonight.

I made these this morning and Pam, I had the same issue! Also when I went to put the dough on the baking sheet it was SO sticky. I was afraid that it wasn't going to cook! But 15 minutes later they were golden brown. They definitely had a cake texture and not like scones. I followed the recipe exactly (except maybe I used too many apples? I had 1 big one and 1 medium sized Macintosh apples). Anyway, they were still incredibly delicious. There were no complaints in my house about breakfast today!!!

Very, very good!! I halved the recipe, and used homemade apple butter instead of apple sauce (which added some sugar). My dough was VERY sticky and runny (more like batter than dough), definitely not "knead-able" but I kept adding more flour until I was at least able to shape it on the pan, and went ahead and baked it anyway. They came out perfectly, and tasted great. I ate them with apple butter, instead of the glaze. I will definitely be making these again!

Made them yesterday - a big hit in our house. Had some left for this morning. I stored them in air tight containers and this morning the glaze had melted or "liquified". I was afraid they were ruined but my husband said they were better the next day. Definitely a keeper!

I made these with a couple subsitutions- I was so excited to make them I couldn't wait haha- so it came out a little more "cakey" but the flavor was amazing!! My Mom dubbed it "Apple Coffee Roll Cake"- Another Winner, Gina!!

I followed the directions exactly.. but the dough was so wet and sticky I had to add atleast 3-4 cups of flour and I still could hardly knead it. It was more like a super sticky bread dough than a scone dough. I managed to make a circle and baked it anyways. I then had to bake it for 55 minutes and it is still goey in the middle... I don't know what happened :( I live in Austria and maybe the flour here is different but I've never had such a simple recipe go so horribly wrong. I don't even think it's edible. I had the same issue when I made your pumpkin bread recipe. The dough was suuuuper sticky and it collapsed after I took it out of the oven. Couldn't eat it.

These are dangerously delicious, as are all of your recipes I have tried! I made a large batch last weekend to help my husband conquer his addiction to Starbucks blueberry scones. It worked, and I will be making more this weekend!

I scored BIG Points with the hubby for having these baking in the oven when he came home from work this evening!! lol He loves pastries in the evening with a cup of coffee. I'm always looking for healthier alternatives and he loves this one!! Two things I want to point out - 1) It is really important to read a lot of comments/reviews for each recipe b4 making a new recipe. Many comments helped me a lot making this because I need a serious road map to cook anything and especially baked goods!! 2) I should've left mine in the oven for at least another 10 minutes. The center was mushy. (He ate that too!!) One other thing, made the glaze exactly according to directions but mine was a clear glaze. Don't know what happened. It was still tasty however.

I just finished making this and OMG they are awesome absolutely loved them. Thank you so much for your'e wonderful recipes I made the southwest turkey meatballs with the creamy cilantro and it was wonderful, thanks again, I will be making more from your page.

I made these today for my Bible Study and didn't even get to have ONE! They were eaten up so fast and everybody raved about them and begged for the recipe. I was able to score a bite from my best friend because I was dying to know the texture as they seemed to have more than a muffin texture than a scone texture. Is this expected Gina? As I mentioned, there were certainly no complaints, but I was wondering because I always get confused on measuring flour. Do you use a spoon to fill a measuring cup? Do you scoop the flour out with the measuring cup? do you stir the flour first? It makes such a difference with the amount you end up with that I wonder if I did not use enough flour and that is why I ended up with a muffin texture instead of scone. Any tips? Thanks!

Just made these, and the Lemon Cranberry version today. They both came out amazingly well. The apple ones were gone within half an hour! I will be making them again. As always, your recipes are a great hit! :)

I had a question. I made these with frozen blueberries and they never had that dough consistency. I added 1/2 a cup more wheat flour and they never turned out right. I cooked them and will see how they taste. What did I do wrong?

I just made these scones with the empire apples and stevia I had. They are delicious. However, I tried to half the glaze recipe as I found it had too much powdered sugar, but had a hard time thickening it. Great recipe and easy to do.

does anyone know how these hold up a few days after baking (if they last that long)? or how they might hold up to travel? I'm going camping in September and am making the chocolate chip scones and hopefully these new ones too, but I wanted to get everyones take on how they hold up first. thanks guys!

Hello Gina--these scones look so delicious...I notice that others have asked a similiar question ..Could you tell me the NI of these scones if we do not use the glaze at all ??? I did notice that you suggested adding a bit more sugar to the dough if the glaze is not used ...any tips on the amount to add ??? thanks so much ...